The Life and Adventures of Rear-Admiral John Paul Jones, Commonly Called Paul…

John Paul Jones was the kind of man legends are made of. Born John Paul in Scotland, he emigrated to America, changed his name, and became the indomitable naval commander who told a British admiral "I have not yet begun to fight" while his ship was sinking beneath him. This 19th-century biography by John S. C. Abbott captures the full arc of America's first great seafaring hero: his daring raids on British shipping, his desperate battle aboard the Bonhomme Richard, his complex relationship with a young nation that forgot its heroes, and his lonely final years fighting for the recognition he deserved. Abbott writes with the partisan fire of an era that still remembered Paul Jones as the man who proved America could hold its own against the British Navy. The book also aims to set the record straight, defending Jones against detractors who questioned his methods and character. This is heroic biography in the Victorian mode: admiring, sometimes hagiographic, but compulsively readable for anyone who wants to understand where the American naval tradition came from.